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DealerRater Expands Footprint into Canada

Google has been incorporating them, we've had some issues too but Ryan at dealerRater was nice enough to jump in on a thread in the forums. http://bit.ly/kt2iaX

It can be frustrating as all hell but that's a different conversation.

Pumped to see more attention paid to us up here! Hope they roll out some DealerRater awards pretty soon... hopefully thats the announcement for next week...

DealerRater Expands Footprint into Canada

WALTHAM, MA – May 9, 2011 – DealerRater today announced that it will extend its reach into Canada, making the company the predominant car dealer review web site throughout North America. As part of its expansion initiative, DealerRater welcomed a new Regional Account Manager, who will work exclusively with car dealerships throughout Canada to manage their online reputation, reach in-market customers and promote quality customer service.

“We are excited to expand our community and reach out to more Canadian dealerships,” said Chip Grueter, President of DealerRater. “As auto consumers increasingly rely on online dealer reviews when selecting a car dealer, building third-party reviews and defining a proven strategy to manage these reviews is critical for today’s successful car dealerships.”

As the first review web site dedicated solely to automotive dealerships, DealerRater has demonstrated unprecedented growth in the past two years in both the number of user reviews and web site visitors. In addition, a record number of dealers have embraced DealerRater as a third-party review site that is critical to their online reputation management efforts. The company maintains over 3,500 dealer partners through its Certification Program.

The DealerRater Certified Dealer Program is a certification program and reputation management tool offered to qualified car dealers. The program is designed to help car dealerships reach DealerRater community members while demonstrating an utmost commitment to quality service.

About DealerRater

DealerRater was founded in 2002 as the first car dealer review website worldwide. With more than 400,000 people joining the DealerRater user community each month, DealerRater is fast becoming the world’s #1 online resource for anyone seeking third-party information on automobile dealerships. DealerRater features more than 38,000 U.S. and International car dealers, 300,000 user reviews and over 1,000,000 classified ads. DealerRater attracts more than 5 million consumers every year who visit the site to search for car dealerships, read current reviews, write their own descriptive reviews, and find car deals – all for free. Car dealers are rated on the criteria of customer service, quality of work, friendliness, price and overall experience. In addition, DealerRater offers qualified car dealers a Certified Dealer Program as a reputation management tool to help them grow their online presence and achieve higher SEO rankings across the Web. Today, over 3,500 dealers are members of DealerRater’s Certification Program. For more information, visit www.DealerRater.com or call 800-266-9455.

TrueCar Incorporates Black Book Used Car Values to Enhance ClearBook.com

TrueCar, Inc. Agreement Incorporates Black Book Used Car Values to Enhance New ClearBook.com Consumer Website.

SANTA MONICA, Calif., May 9, 2011 --TrueCar, which provides consumers with reliable, trustworthy car pricing information, has reached an agreement with National Auto Research, a division of Hearst Business Media, to license Black Book used car values.  This allows TrueCar to provide richer information and further enhance its recently launched used car pricing website, ClearBook.com, with extensive information supplied by Black Book, a valued automotive industry resource for more than 60 years.

ClearBook is the first used vehicle pricing website, free to consumers, that analyzes listing and transaction prices for the used car marketplace.  With ClearBook, used car purchasers obtain objective, unbiased price guidance for a car based on year, make, model, mileage and condition.  With the addition of Black Book's values, the industry's most relied upon source for trade-in prices, consumers will now know the real value of their trade-in before they walk into the dealership, helping to facilitate a fair transaction between buyer and seller.

Scott Painter, CEO and Founder of TrueCar and ClearBook, said, "Black Book's data is an invaluable tool in generating a fair value for the sale or trade-in price of a used vehicle. Consumers in the market for a used car will benefit greatly from this relationship."

The next ClearBook upgrade will combine trade-in value, target sales price, and list price to give buyers and sellers the most transparent view into vehicle pricing, whether that vehicle is a trade-in or sold privately.

Tom Cross, President of Black Book, said, "Pricing transparency helps consumers and dealers make the car buying and selling processes easier.  Black Book's retail trade-in pricing provides consumers with very accurate and up to date insight into the used car trade-in market and nicely rounds out the ClearBook.com experience.  We are delighted to be working with the TrueCar team, and are excited about the value that this new tool brings to automotive consumers."

Painter went on to say, "Black Book's commitment to comprehensive, unbiased pricing information is in lock-step with the goals we have set to create a fair, trustworthy and informed marketplace. Black Book partnering with us is a ringing endorsement of the value proposition ClearBook and TrueCar both offer consumers."

About Hearst Business Media
Hearst Business Media, a division of Hearst Corporation, operates more than 20 business-to-business information services, electronic databases and publications. The group has holdings in the automotive, electronic, medical/pharmaceutical and finance industries.

About Black Book
Best known in the Automotive Industry for providing timely, independent, and accurate vehicle pricing data, the Black Book® family of vehicle appraisal guides (www.BlackBookUSA.com) is published by National Auto Research, a division of Hearst Business Media.  New and used car dealers, lenders, manufacturers, fleet remarketers, and government agencies have relied on Black Book since 1955.  Black Book provides values for both new and used vehicles, including cars and light trucks produced since 1946, collectible and exotic vehicles, motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles, personal watercraft, and heavy duty commercial trucks and trailers.  Black Book data is published daily in multiple electronic formats including data feeds, Internet-based applications, hand held PDAs, web enabled cell phones, Pocket PCs, iPhone, iPad, iTouch, Droid, BlackBerry and Palm devices, SmartPhones, Micro Browsers, online trade appraisal services, and in a variety of other custom products.  Printed versions are also available on a weekly basis.  Whether you're buying, selling, or lending, Black Book's mission is to provide the Automotive Industry with timely, independent, and accurate information to help make the right decisions.

About TrueCar, Inc.
TrueCar, Inc. is an automotive solutions provider focused on changing how cars are sold by providing a significantly better customer experience while helping qualified dealer partners to gain incremental market share and reduce costs. TrueCar.com is a transparent, visual publisher of new car transaction data. TrueCar.com price reports help both dealers and consumers to agree on the parameters of a fair deal by providing an accurate, comprehensive and simple understanding of what others actually paid for the identically equipped new car over the last 30 days both locally and nationally. TrueCar, Inc. works with a national network of nearly 5,000 Certified Dealers that provide up-front, no-haggle, competitive pricing to assist some of the nation's largest and most well respected membership and service organizations to meet the auto buying needs of their members and customers. These partnerships include American Express, AAA, USAA and more than 60 others. Collectively these audiences represent over 1M in-market customers each month. TrueCar, Inc. is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA and has offices in San Francisco. The company was founded in 2005 and has been profitable since 2009. With nearly 200 percent year-over-year growth TrueCar has driven nearly 300,000 sales and is developing a suite of transaction oriented products and services centered on transparency and radical clarity as a result of comprehensively analyzing market data and information. You can follow TrueCar on Twitter and become a fan of TrueCar on Facebook.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Ed, the writing is all over the walls, it's everywhere I turn.

Our industry spends 300-400$ PVR in advertisments.  We sell 11-17 million new units each year and another 20million low mile used units.

$350 x 35 million = $12.25 BILLION per year for DEALERS ONLY.
 

CHANGE IS HAPPENING ALREADY, MUCH MORE IS COMING

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Ed, I saved this eye popper for last, visit:

Google search: boutique

Click on TOP position: boutiques.com

Scroll to bottom, see fine print:
Boutiques.com charges merchants to include products on this website in most cases. More information for merchants is available here. <--follow that link

G-A-S-P!!

HOLY SH*T!!


"Google's Breaking It's Laws, Breaking it's laws..."

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Ed, I've seen them too.  They're where ever the search Paid Dollars are "off the charts" Google is "breakin the law, breakin the law..."

Examples popup and disappear as Google tweaks their models.  I've seen it in:

life insurance quotes
Hotel Bookings
Air

If you re-visit that Pool table SERP, the "Brands" breakout is all over too.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

First Ed, we need some background music to set the stage for our Google observations...

Login to view embedded media View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psTUiQzNoxw
(open in new tab)
Judas Priest - Breaking The Law, Breaking the Law

The remake should be
"Google's Breaking It's Laws, Breaking it's laws..."

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Good By SEO.  Google is eating it's young. It's only a matter of time until it hits our biz.

Google Search: Pool Tables

LOOK AT THAT RESULT!

DealerTrack & Chrome, have you told Mark O'Neil of this opportunity yet?

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

I'll spin it another way Alex.

SEO was a gateway to stimulate and reward innovation. Startups could challenge the big boys, all they had to do was... be smarter.

Google now rewards Brand over innovation.

Before we get all misty eye'd over the death of a pioneering era, all google is trying to do is find a way to reduce the noise in searches. Google knows that car searches is Brand dominated.

Google Products is all about Brand Emphasis.

You gotta love capitalism, If Google overshoots, Bing will be working every angle to eat Google's lunch.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

I see. You're simply saying that SEO, as a single marketing channel, is no longer valid; especially for startups.

That makes sense. As we know Google's mission in life is to provide the most relevant "thing" to a user, why would they help deliver something that isn't proven? The SEO game is changing quite a bit right now (it is always changing, but it looks a bit more drastic than usual right now). I said it in my last DealerRefresh article and you're adding more argument for it with this article.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Woops, Bad timing on my part. Mr O'neil must be out of the office today. DealerTrack has just reported earnings this am and they crushed it, their stock ( TRAK ) is up 20% today on a strong quarterly report!


Chrome best not let this one get away! AutoData is more than capable of pulling this one off!

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Note to all. This is conjecture. There are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up to make this happen. Google Products is build around ecommerce markets. Automobiles for sale are not an ecommerce product.

BUT... we're talking CRAZY LARGE CASH on the hook that can't be ignored.

15million New vehicles sold annually with an average Dealer ad cost PVR of $400ish is a SIX BILLION DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY that can't be denied.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Terrence,My respect for your teams work has no bounds, you guys are the rebels and I LIKE rebels ;-)You wrote: "
Users aren't searching for "Year + Make + Model" keywords on Google because of the irrelevant and limited results. "

If I were the Google Products manager, I can't think of a more important reason for Google Products to be in the automobile retail space than is brought out by your reply.

You wrote:

"...For NEW
car-related terms, the largest volume of searches and traffic are still
based on general terms (not vehicle-specific)."

We agree that the largest volume comes from
general terms (not vehicle-specific). BUT, Google Products does not deploy into this area. We all agree and understand that Organic Short tail SEO has already suffered (from Adwords and
Google Places). Why else would major players buy adwords ads? What I am saying is that Google Products is AIMED at long tail SEO and is yet another punch in the Organic
SEO gut.

You wrote:
"...I do disagree that Organic SEO would suffer....at all."

Terrance, there is no question that we're talking about the small long tail arena only. But, when it hit's it'll be a nuke. Look at this Screen Shot (below) and you tell me that these pics won't steal
eyeballs AND create shopper interest AND new shopper phrases. http://www.dealerrefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/audi_google_audi.png ALL of which will go DIRECTLY to the
DEALER.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Terrence,My respect for your teams work has no bounds, you guys are the rebels and I LIKE rebels ;-)You wrote: "
Users aren't searching for "Year + Make + Model" keywords on Google because of the irrelevant and limited results. "

If I were the Google Products manager, I can't think of a more important reason for Google Products to be in the automobile retail space than is brought out by your reply.

You wrote:

"...For NEW
car-related terms, the largest volume of searches and traffic are still
based on general terms (not vehicle-specific)."

We agree that the largest volume comes from
general terms (not vehicle-specific). BUT, Google Products does not deploy into this area. We all agree and understand that Organic Short tail SEO has already suffered (from Adwords and
Google Places). Why else would major players buy adwords ads? What I am saying is that Google Products is AIMED at long tail SEO and is yet another punch in the Organic
SEO gut.

You wrote:
"...I do disagree that Organic SEO would suffer....at all."

Terrance, there is no question that we're talking about the small long tail arena only. But, when it hit's it'll be a nuke. Look at this Screen Shot (below) and you tell me that these pics won't steal
eyeballs AND create shopper interest AND new shopper phrases. http://www.dealerrefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/audi_google_audi.png ALL of which will go DIRECTLY to the
DEALER.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Andy,

I know its a long read, but, If you re-read it, it's all there, everything you don't understand is there... and I mean it's ALL there.

A screenshot of my Google Merchant/Base is up there, see this link:http://www.dealerrefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/search_google_q7.png

The inventory in Google Base talks to NOTHING because the Google Products Team has not come up with solution for our space (no ecommerce auto dealer retail and no vendor to supply auto manufacturer product attributes for it).

My Google PPC account, has 56,000 keywords and accounts for 22% of my total site traffic. My son and I have tried every trick in the book to get our Google Base to feed the Google Product Targets needed to display the pics in the PPC ads.

Nada.

My multiple discussions with Edgenet confrimed all my detective work. Google Products is the hub and the attributes are the key. No Google Products, no PPC with Pics, no Google Products Organics.

An Open Letter to Mark O'Neil - Chairman and CEO of DealerTrack

Joe, good post. It's always been chicken or egg with Google. Users aren't searching for "Year + Make + Model" keywords on Google because of the irrelevant and limited results. We actually approached them in 2009 with a similar plan.
I do disagree that Organic SEO would suffer....at all. For NEW car-related terms, the largest volume of searches and traffic are still based on general terms (not vehicle-specific). It's the USED market that drives the vehicle-specific keyword searches, which the 3rd party sites will continue to dominate until Google decides to incorporate this into their Products, Shopping, or even better - an Automotive channel specifically.

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